Many hands make for light work

By the Session Leader:

“What a grand day!” as one of our volunteers exclaimed as she arrived.  

Overnight temperatures at the nearest weather station had dipped to -4.6 C.  So first thing the sweet spring flowers had frost on them:

Frost soon melted in the warm sunshine.  Green-Gymmers warmed up too. 

There were many of us this morning: 15 volunteers altogether.  [Plus 2 supernumeraries – Ed.]  Hence a crowded car park: 

We had worked on the site in the autumn, and not much had grown over the winter.  The leader was therefore worried that we were not going to have enough work.  He need not have been concerned: we were given a good list of five main jobs.

The first was right behind the cars.  Wheel-barrowing (some of) the pile of logs …

over to the wood store.  

Not so easy as two of the barrows had faulty tyres!  But by the end of the session the workforce had moved those logs which were ready for burning, restacked the oversize ones, and left the area neat and tidy:

The second job was very familiar: filling in potholes along a driveway.  This looked as if this was a task which had been done before in previous years:

With all their training and experience from last time we did this at Green Gym, there were Green-Gymmers eager to volunteer for that:

It had to be a team of 4: two to shovel (we had only 2 spades); one person “wheelbarrow competent and confident”; and one supervisor to hold the imaginary clipboard. 

They started at the far end of the driveway …

and worked their way inwards, with much mock-serious discussion about “grading” of potholes, “belts” of potholes, whether the team should be engaged in “pothole prevention work” by addressing smaller depressions which had the potential to become potholes in the future, and working methods:

“You need to work in unison.”

– “We are in Unison!”

– “And we could tender for projects left by Carillion.”

When they had done, you could certainly see where they had been.  They had left the drive easier to motor along, but looking like it had sticking plasters:

 

Meanwhile the third task was being tackled in hiding:

This team was cutting down part of a tree that had collapsed with the weight of ivy and wind-pressure.

A fourth team was tackling a bigger horizontal tree that had also collapsed.  But the leader failed to take a photo.  Or were those volunteers trying to stay incognito?

The fifth team had found a gap in the dead hedge at the far end of the site which required some hefty stakes to be brought over from the sawing teams:

The porter happens to be Scottish, but this is not the Highland Fling.

The stakes had to be sharpened …

then hammered into place.

In the middle of all the work we had to stop for tea-break which was in an idyllic spot …

under the shade of the London plane tree which we have admired on previous occasions:

The goodies included home-made Jaffa cakes and frangipane:

The general verdict was that they were “better than the ones you can buy in shops.”

As the tasks were finishing we were left to drag as much dead, and live, wood as we could to build up the dead hedge by the road:

Two characters turned up along the way, and wanted to join: 

Spiderman I recognize.  Who’s the other dude?

PS from the Editor:

One of our readers may be able to help with identification of our supernumeraries?  Spiderman was my fave comic-book hero when I was a kid; subject of endless spin-offs since.  I have yet to see a Green-Gymmer superhero or lego character.

Blasts of January

By the Session Leader:

A “good sess” this morning – and, thanks to Green-Gym efforts, much easier driving away from the site afterwards than it had been arriving by wheels along a bridleway rather the worse for winter weather.

January usually means plenty of these to enjoy where the habitat is right for them:

Those specimens were spotted near Oxford around the weekend, so I was on the lookout for more flights of angelic snowdrops on site today.  In fact, the ones in the nature reserve were still in their infancy, though bearing the promise of some spectacular displays to come:

We were not, however, there to be surprised by snowdrops.  And thankfully, though it was a crisp day, the “blasts of January” (as I think one of the characters in The Winter’s Tale says?) were not so strong as to blow anyone through and through, however lean. 

The main task was to shift several tonnes of scalpings: from pile in car-park to the potholes in the bridleway.  This was the job that most of the volunteers this morning piled into with zeal – also knowing, of course, that it would ensure they were not be cold for more than 10 minutes:

Task #2 was to level a mound of soil and prepare for sowing:

Task #3 pond clearance:

And the initially unscheduled task, to see to the fence which had worked loose in the wind, and which urgently required repair before any serious blasts of January (or February, March, &c) shredded the panels:

After tea-break, there was a little re-organization.  The fence job was completed, to the evident satisfaction of the construction team:

They then moved on to clearing “leaves” [actually more like leaves + compost - Ed.] from the industrial-heritage area:

Meanwhile, volunteers new to the place set off on a guided tour to view some of the sights of the site:

The soil-prep team had levelled earth, and ‘raked to a fine tilth’ (as the expression goes):

The pond-clearer could look back at a job well done, and measure the remaining depth in one from which a massive quantity of leaves had been carefully removed without puncturing the liner:

And the roadway-maintenance crew?  Well their satisfaction was that of all of us driving away from the site today (while two volunteers virtuously walked to their respective homes): it was a much smoother ride leaving than arriving.